Lily's Story (48 page)

She looked away towards the
river mouth, whose contrary currents she could hear even from this
distance. Where the grassy field sloped away towards the water, she
could see the smoke from several campfires and, partially obscured
by the uncertain undulations of the ground, the smudged outlines of
the hoboes and bums just off the trains. They slept down there in
the open or in makeshift lean-to’s; some of them, it was widely
rumoured, were deserters from the Union Army or spies from the
Confederacy. None had ever been apprehended. Lily quickened her
pace. Around another bend she encountered what appeared to be a
deserted shack on her right and a bit farther on the left a
sizable-looking house with a verandah, glazed windows, several
rambling sheds somewhat attached to the main structure, a
see-through barn behind, along with a coop, pig-pen and two smaller
huts, possibly for implements. Some attempt had been made to grow
vegetables in the thin, wind-bitter soil. The clapboard had once
long ago been painted – a sprightly blue perhaps. Seated on a
wicker rocker on the verandah, Lily spied the unmistakeable profile
of young Marlene.

Lily waved and started through
the burdocks, balancing her pie with its gauze cover. Marlene
appeared to be startled, squinted into the sunlight, then bolted
off the porch and into the back yard where she disappeared behind
one of the outhouses. Lily stopped. The grasshoppers see-sawed
around her. No sound came from the house. She glanced farther up
the Alley. In the distance among the trees she could discern two
other dwellings, the nearest quite large, its canary yellow and
mauve exterior glinting seditiously. Well, she’d come this far.
Faintly came the echo of children’s voices, the ebb and flow of
their carefree play somewhere among the pliant dunes. She walked
boldly up to the verandah, slipped on a wobbly step, righted
herself noisily, and rapped on the screen door, an action which
stirred up a harem of flies drowsing there. Half of them plunged
into the dark interior through one of the several portholes.

“
Anybody
home?” Lily called softly. The flies had noticed the pie. As she
turned to go, she heard the squeak of a wicker chair, as if someone
had just shifted their weight from one buttock to another. “You
there, Sophie?”

“
What in hell
do you want here?
” It was a
male voice, deep and angered.

“
I come to see
Sophie. Is she here?”

A long pause, a stretching of
wicker mesh, then: “An’ who might you be?”

“
Sophie Potts
live here?”

“
Who in Sam
Shit wants to know.”

“
Tell her Lily
came to see her. I’ll come back another time.”

A shadow filled the doorway.
The flies danced and disappeared. Two black eyes, like chiselled
coal, burned flamelessly in the bearded face suddenly peering out
at her. White teeth flashed in a friendly grin. “Hey, you don’t go
runnin’ off, Miss Lily Whats-her-name. Don’t you know a joke when
you hear one?”

Lily paused without turning
back.

“
Better brush
them flies offa that pie,” he said. “I like my sweets nice an’
clean.”

Lily looked back up at him. “Is
Sophie home?”

“
Why don’t you
come inside like a proper lady and I’ll see if she might
be.”

“
I just wanted
to –”

He opened the door with a
flourish and she saw him fully in the light. He was a large,
well-proportioned man with a handsome, bearded face, arms that
bulged with a surplus of muscle, and ape-size hands that were
scarred with calluses as thick and layered as a toad’s skin. His
teeth were wonderfully even and his eyes rolled in their lively
sockets to express and disguise. The only thing to mar an otherwise
striking impression was a slight crook of the spine, camouflaged
somewhat by his loose workshirt, as if he had spent too long arched
in one position.

“
I said come
in. What’re ya’ scared of, eh! I’m Morty Potts, Stoker to them that
hate me. I crush big bugs an’ little mates who get on my nerves,
but I ain’t killed a sweet-lookin’ woman yet. Least none that I
know of.”

“
Sophie
home?”

“
You got a
one-track mind, girl.” She caught the blast of his whiskey breath.
“Soph’ll be real mad now if I don’t invite you in to wait for her.
You comin’ in or not?”

“
Where is
she?”

“
She’s down at
the Lake bathin’ the kids, for Christ’s sake. There’s only me
here.”

“
An’
Marlene.”

His stare darkened. Flies
were pouring into the house as he held the door wide open. Lily
caught a whiff of urine and festering diaper. “Marlene’s gone off,”
he said. “Most likely she’s fetchin’ her momma right now, so why
don’t you just come on in an’ have a drink ...of tea.”

“
I better not
wait. Please tell Sophie I’ll be back.”

“
Hey!” he
called down to her.

Lily stiffened, then turned
slowly.

“
You gonna
leave that pie?”

A
s Lily made the first
bend in the Alley, out of the corner of her eye she saw Marlene
emerge from the bushes and tiptoe up to the house. Lily sped up but
she wasn’t fast enough. The smack of hand to cheek flew past her
towards the foul hearth-fires ahead. She heard the girl shriek once
like a reflex. She thought of a stoker’s hands, ferrying coal from
bin to blast with Beelzebub’s grip.

“W
ell,” Tom said,
grateful for her return. “Did she like the pie?”

“She wasn’t home,” Lily
said.

“
Oh. That’s
too bad.” He looked away. “You going back?”

“
Soon as I
can,” she said with no conviction. “How’ve my boys
been?”

17

1

B
y 1866 the War
Between the States had passed through denouement to catastrophe and
uneasy resolution, just as its wily protagonist – the Great
Emancipator – was gunned down front and centre by a bad actor who
hadn’t read the original script. The million casualties – dead and
maimed and orphaned – did not return for a curtain call. It was
said that an epilogue to this melodrama was already in rehearsal
under the working title ‘Manifest Destiny’. Farther north, the
hastily arranged marriage of the two Canadas was heading, after
twenty-five years of mutual incompatability, towards certain
divorce – unless some close relatives could be persuaded to share
the misery in a more encompassing family unit dubbed by its
proponents ‘confederation’. The papers were full of little else but
news of the scheme and of the tub-thumping Fenians below the border
uttering the most horrible threats against the peace of not only
Canadians but also and especially New Brunswickers, Nova Scotians
and Prince Edward Islanders. The hue and cry went up everywhere, no
more so than in those towns unfortunate enough to abut an American
state bristling with Fenian brothers determined to liberate Ireland
by decapitating the silos of every barn between Fort Erie and
Sarnia.

In the teeth of such infamy it
is little wonder that scant attention was paid to local concerns:
like the continuance of the rate wars between the Great Western and
Grand Trunk, to the embarrassment of the public purse and two dozen
bankrupt municipalities; like the rumblings of discontent faintly
heard from the New West where Canadians were already wearing out
their welcome among the puzzled half-breeds; like the visiting
phrenologist from Boston who proclaimed in the Town Hall of Sarnia
that man was a ‘developmental creature’ and the earth around him
eons old, only to be scientifically refuted, to general
approbation, the next week by a learned Doctor of Theology from
Pittsburgh; like the death of Mrs. Elspeth Edgeworth, widow of the
late Colonel Edgeworth of London, who passed away quietly in her
sleep at the home of her sister-in-law in Toronto. The good woman
was laid to rest beside her husband in their home city.

L
ily insisted that
they could not afford train-fare for both of them to attend the
funeral in London. She even believed it as she said it, and was
secretly hurt when Tom showed no inclination to accept her
argument. “Of course we can,” he snapped, “and we both know very
well why you won’t go.” She was about to say something in her
defense when Brad’s whimper from the boys’ room sent her scurrying
off. Pulling the child close to her warmth, feeling the cold shiver
as it clutched at her – she heard Tom slam the door and go
out.

Later, into the silence she
said: “I loved her very much.”

T
om leaned over and
held a piece of meat on his fork until Robbie drew it, teeth
flashing, back into his mouth and smirked up at his father. “Nice
little puppy,” Tom said and gave him a pat.

“
I wish she
could’ve seen Brad.”

“
Brad go, Brad
go,” the little one chanted, secure on his mother’s lap.

“
Gimme another
one, Da,” Robbie said and spilled his milk.

“
I take it you
haven’t changed your mind.”

“
She was the
kindest person I ever knew,” Lily said. She sponged at the milk
with the end of her apron.

“
Da, gimme
another –”

“
Shut up,
Robbie.
Shut
up!
”

It took Lily an hour to
quiet Robbie down, and while she hated to see how a cross word or a
sideways look from his father could devastate him so, she cherished
his flesh curled into hers so close she could hear his heart
palpitate like a minnow’s gill out of water. Naturally Brad fussed
all the while, complaining that his “tummy ache”, and finally
throwing a tantrum to prove his point. She held one child in each
arm until Brad fell asleep and Robbie just let his head slide onto
her shoulder, in which haven he could nestle down and prepare for
the wonderful dream that always came just before sleep. Very
quietly, so as not to disturb her boys, Lily wept for Aunt Elspeth,
for the walled garden, for Lucille in the morning room, and for all
that had happened there.

Tom
slept on the cot. At breakfast he
picked Robbie up, spun him around in the clouds and tousled his
hair. Robbie responded by punching Tom on the stomach with mock
ferocity. “Can I go with you, Da? Can I?” Tom gave him a manly sort
of hug. “Soon as I come home tomorrow, I’ll take you hunting,” he
said.

Tom
was eerily polite until he was ready
to leave for the train. Lily noticed the dark hollows under his
eyes. She reached out and straightened his tie. Tom raised her hand
with his. He gave her the strangest look and said tonelessly:
“You’ll have to leave him some day, you know.”

When Gimpy
aimed his father-in-law’s buggy around the bend in the lane,
Tom turned and waved at the boys.
Robbie flapped his hand like a pennant.

F
rom the moment of his
unorthodox entrance into the world Bradley Marshall was a difficult
child to cope with. Being premature, he seemed to try and
compensate by constant suckling, demanding service at any hour of
the clock, overcommitting his capacity and upchucking the lot.
Whereupon he would cry with doubled hunger and indignation. When he
did manage to feed satisfactorily, he would be wakened by colic,
wailing his grief far into the night and the wary dawn. Where
Robbie had been cherubic, Brad was wizened and irritable; where
Robbie was robust and outgoing, Brad was sickly and withdrawn, as
if his arrival had after all been some perverse mistake. When his
colic subsided, he picked up a touch of whooping cough from his
brother, then the chicken-pox, and most recently the red measles.
Lily had two sick children to care for, and a husband with little
sleep to sweeten his shortened temper. Robbie suffered his maladies
gallantly, lying in his bed (Tom had made them single ‘bunks’ for
‘their room’) and letting Lily minister to him, smiling bleakly
when she had to leave to attend Brad, hugging her to him when the
pain spilled into occasional tears. In many ways, Lily often
thought, these were their best moments together: Robbie knew for
certain who she was, what she was for, why she couldn’t be done
without. As a result, Robbie responded easily to treatment and was
soon over the afflicting, bruiting his appreciation to the wild
woods and fields he loved to roam in – within a mother’s shout of
the house.

Poor Brad,
being a year younger and never quite recovered from one malady
before the next one struck, suffered badly and without dignity. He
would shriek till his nose ran and slathered his chin, and
Tom would give him several sharp
shakes, stilling the fit but ushering in a pathetic, unceasing
series of whimpers and mewlings that made his tormentor instantly
contrite. But when the whimpering continued unconscionably, Tom
would plop the child into Lily’s arms wherever she was and stomp
off without a word. Usually she could hear him take his gun down
and head off for First Bush, with Robbie trailing him ineffectually
to the edge of the garden, then returning to Lily to cry out his
anger or, more likely, making certain that her attempts to soothe
Brad were unsuccessful. When both boys were sick together, Tom
would bring young Mary Bacon out from the village to help. Mary was
always cheerful and efficient, chattering away to Lily, to the
boys, to the lilac bushes, to anything that moved or was beautiful.
Robbie had someone new to show off his acrobatics to, and was, Lily
thought, excessively affectionate to the girl. Brad did not ‘take
to’ Mary, who failed to notice.